Remembering John H. Battison (1915-2012)

Word reached us
during the last
week of August
that John Henry Battison
had reached the end of
his life. Although this
was not unexpected—
he was just days shy of
his 97th birthday and
had been experiencing
some health problems—
it nevertheless came as a blow to those who
knew him and what he had accomplished
in his lifetime.

Perhaps you’ll remember him as the driving
force behind the establishment of the
Society of Broadcast Engineers. However,
there was a lot more to John’s life than that.
He was truly an engineer’s engineer and one
of the few still around when both radio and
television broadcasting began during the
last century. He truly saw it all happen in his
lifetime—crystal sets to HDTV.

If you met John once, you never forgot
him—he was a man of physically small stature,
was always outspoken and still maintained
his British accent nearly 70 years after
leaving his English homeland. He did his
growing up in London, just at the right time
to become one of the many young people
caught up in magic of broadcasting when
radio entered the home in the 1920s.

Like many of us who made a career in
broadcasting, he was so enamored with the
new medium that he took it to bed with
him—listening to distant broadcasts when
he was supposed to be sleeping. John was
stealthier than most, however, and concocted
an “early warning” system to signal his
parents ascent up the stairway to make sure
that lights were out and young John was getting
sufficient rest for school the next day.

Speaking of school, John admitted that
more than once he feigned health issues so
he could stay home and experiment with
his receiver constructed to receive the very
early 30-line mechanical TV transmissions.

When he’d completed his formal education,
radio and TV were in his blood and he
went to work for Ekco, a pioneer British
radio and television manufacturer. By this
time the BBC had established a regular television
broadcast schedule and there was a
growing demand for “tellies.”

Unfortunately, political doings in Berlin
soon spelled an end to both U.K. TV broadcasting
and his employment at Ecko. With
war formally declared, John followed up on
another love of his—aviation. He enlisted in
the RAF and spent the next six and a half
years defending the homeland, piloting both
Spitfire fighters and Lancaster bombers.

John Battison at age 16 operating a homebrew amateur transmitter

Once the final “all-clear” was issued, John
journeyed to the States to see what broadcasting
was like over here, soon landing a
job at Kansas City’s KMBC. From there, he
spring-boarded to CBS television network in
New York that was starting up. He worked
with Peter Goldmark and recalled doing
field strength measurements in connection
with color transmissions from CBS’s experimental
UHF transmitter.

John later decided to try out television
broadcasting for himself, and with the help
of a factory deal from the Dumont folks, set
out for New Mexico to launch one of that
state’s early TV stations. There John did it
all—engineering duties and appearances
on the other side of the camera. Two of the
staples of early TV broadcasting were wrestling
matches and children’s shows. John
announce the matches, providing commentary
as the hulks did their body slams and
headlocks. At other times, he would don different
garb and become a slightly different
type of engineer—a locomotive driver—as
he hosted the local kiddies hour.

John was afflicted with a lifelong wanderlust,
and in time left New Mexico to become
an international broadcast consultant.
When he eventually returned to the States,
he learned that two leading electrical/radio
engineering societies—the AIEE and the
IRE—had decided to merge into one organization
(the IEEE). John was fearful that this
amalgamation would leave radio and TV engineering
staffs without proper representation
and decided to launch a professional organization
directed solely to the interests of
the men and women who operated broadcast
facilities—the Society of Broadcast Engineers.
He personally mailed out thousands
of membership queries to help get the new
organization off the ground in 1964.

John continued in broadcast engineering,
later becoming director of engineering
at Ohio State University’s telecommunications
department. He also authored some
15 engineering textbooks and published
more than 500 technical articles. Another of
John’s broad range of interests was religion.
Somewhere in his busy life, he made time
to become ordained an as Anglican Church
priest, and for many years conducted services
in Columbus, Ohio, making a 160 mile
roundtrip commute from his home every
Sunday to preach the gospel. This ministry
continued until just a few weeks before he
passed away on August 28.

The broadcast engineering world is a
better place due to John’s efforts. The shadow
he left was a very long one. He will be
missed by us all.